The birth of the internet has revolutionized all manner of human communications. One form of human interaction that has adapted successfully to the internet is dating. Numerous websites have sprung up to support the interest in online dating services. Relationships are frequently forged in online chats and on message boards. Meeting potential mates over the internet offers the advantage of convenience and selection. Yet many of the problems that make it difficult to meet a romantic partner in traditional settings remain in online dating services.
One major obstacle to identifying potential romantic partners is fear of rejection. In a traditional setting or in an online dating service, one person has to make the first move. That person is opening themselves up to rejection by the party to whom advances are made. On an online dating service such as Match.com, or U.S. Pat. No. 5,963,951, that risk is alleviated by the relative anonymity of members and the fact that they interact from a distance. Nevertheless, this fear remains a factor both in preventing members from contacting one another and in preventing people from joining the site in the first place. For this reason, Match.com introduced a new “wink” option on its website. The “wink” allows members to indicate interest in another member without sending a personal message. Because interaction between the parties is limited, rejection is less of an issue. Nevertheless, this innovation does not solve the problem. “Wink”ing is still a unilateral advance and cannot determine a mutual interest.
Other websites have been created in an attempt to solve this problem. Sites such as secretadmirer.com, ecrush.com, and crushdate.com offer a service whereby members can determine whether their love interests share an attraction for them. After signing up, the member inputs the email addresses of his romantic interests. These people receive emails from the site informing them that someone is interested in them and asking them to become site members themselves. When they sign up, the new members enter the email addresses of their romantic interests. Whenever two people list each other as romantic interests, the site sends an email to both parties letting them know of the mutual attraction.
These websites do not effectively deal with the problem of shyness and fear of rejection. Users must take affirmative action and sign up at the site and the people they email must do so as well. More than likely the people who receive emails will believe they are spam and simply delete them. The member who caused the emails to be sent will never know whether those people are not interested in him or whether they simply deleted the email. Furthermore, it requires a person to know the email address of the person they are interested in. The method is also unlikely to result in matches between people with moderate interest in each other. People will not go to the effort of finding and entering the email address of everyone they are even somewhat attracted to. At most, they will enter the addresses of those they have a very strong interest in.
Another attempt at solving this problem can be found in Sutcliffe et al (U.S. Pat. No. 6,249,282). In Sutcliffe, a user enters a number of characteristic and criteria data describing his or herself and the kind of people he or she is interested in dating, respectively, into a common database. The Sutcliffe program then searches through the database to find users whose characteristic data satisfy the user's criteria data and whose criteria data is satisfied by the user's characteristic data. When it finds a match, the program notifies the user and provides contact information for the matches.
A similar method is used with a paging device in Shapira (U.S. Pat. No. 5,086,394). In Shapira, personal data such as traits and interests are entered into a device at a central location. The device searches for matching entries satisfying geographic and time constraints and pages users when a match is found. Fraccaroli (U.S. Pat. No. 6,549,768) does essentially the same thing but for cell phone users.
Sutcliffe, Shapiro, and Fraccaroli are imperfect solutions. They really only automate to some extent the process of finding potential romantic partners who are compatible. One user still must approach the other, and may still be rejected. Any set of data input is insufficient to encompass the many poorly understood factors that go into a mutual attraction or lack thereof. Additionally, the members are still strangers and cannot rely on the information provided by the other party. Many shy people will still be unwilling to join such a site or service.
Another attempt at resolving this difficulty is Sudai et al (U.S. Pat. No. 5,950,200). The Sudai method is much like that of the secretadmirer.com type of websites. Users input the identities of persons who they are attracted to or who share mutual interests. The inputs are stored in a database and searched repeatedly for matches, that is, for two people who feel the same way about each other. When a match is found, both users will be notified unless both agree that one of the parties should initiate (they have input this preference previously), in which case that party is informed before the other. This system suffers from the major flaw that both users must be members of this service. Like the secretadmirer.com websites, it will also result in few matches between people with only moderate attraction for one another because it requires each user to manually enter the names of people they are interested in.
Another obstacle that online dating sites do not resolve is the limited amount of information available about a potential date. Because the members are generally strangers, they have no way to verify the truthfulness of the other party's statements about themselves. This is an enormous problem in online dating. Many members are married but pass themselves off as single or portray themselves in a much more desirable light than is warranted. When the members meet in real life, they may be very disappointed by what they see, or may not learn of the other party's deception until well into the relationship, leading to heartbreak and pain. Members may even be subjected to physical violence when they meet for the first time.
One way to deal with this obstacle is to meet people that you already know or who know people who you also know. You then have a basis for determining the truthfulness of those peoples' representations of themselves. One efficient way of finding and communicating with people who share contacts with you is through a social networking site such as Friendster (Friendster.com, U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,069,308 and 7,117,254 B2). These sites allow you to know and view information about the friends and other contacts of your friends and contacts.
The sites thus provide users with an efficient means of identifying people they may have an interest in and whose information they can verify. However, no system exists for the full exploitation of the social network phenomenon for facilitating the meeting of people with a mutual interest. These sites do not have a process by which members can indicate an interest in other members and be automatically contacted when the interest is mutual.
Lists of contacts are also often stored in “buddy lists” (See U.S. Pat. No. 6,366,962) in online messaging software or in cell phones. Although Fraccaroli uses cell phones to notify users of matches, it does not take advantage of the contact lists in users' cell phones.
Needs exist for improved methods of facilitating contact between mutually interested parties.